Hunter Faced 3 Deadly Bear Attacks, How He Survived Is Incredible

It was around midnight when Johnson set out from camp to track a 525-pound black bear that his friend had shot near Sandstone, Minnesota. Johnson, a lifelong hunter, waited for four hours before tracking the bear, hoping it had expired. But in the darkness, the bear found him.

According to KARE11, the massive bear charged Johnson and knocked him briefly unconscious.

“I’m going, ‘this is a strange dream and it’s opening its mouth and it’s going in slow motion,'” Johnson said. “I’m trying to stop it from coming down on my face and then I realize this is really happening.”

In one bite, the bear snapped the bone in Johnson’s left arm in half. Using his right arm, he reached for his knife and stabbed the bear repeatedly. After sustaining several knife wounds, the bear retreated.

Johnson’s hunting knife. Image via KARE11

Minutes later it returned for more. Johnson said he exhausted all of his energy and adrenaline trying to fend off the bear. The bear retreated a second time and Johnson called out for help from his friends and fiancé. That’s when the bear came back for thirds.

Johnson said he felt like he was about to see his last moments.

“Once I got to the point where I thought I was going to die, and I got myself to the point where I was ready to die, there was no more fear,” he said.

But in that terrible moment, Johnson apparently found an opportunity and seized it. With the bear’s mouth open, he jammed his knife into its throat. The bear bit into his leg lifted him up and slammed his body onto the ground. Then it disappeared into the woods.

The struggle lasted roughly 30 minutes. If Johnson didn’t have his trusty knife with him, he probably wouldn’t have survived it.

His friends later found the dead bear just 50 feet away from the attack site.